A 

LADY OF THE OLDEN TIME 



BY 

Emily Malbone Morgan, 

AUTHOR OF 

"A Poppy Garden,'" "Prior Rahere's Rose," etc. 



1In ber was ^outb, bcautx;, witb bumble aport, 

JBount^, rlcbess, anb womanly feature, 
(Sob better wot, tben m^ pen can report." 



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BELKNAP & WARFIELD. 
Hartford, Conn. 






COPYRIGHTED 

OCTOBER 1896 

BY 

EMILY MALBONE MORGAN. 



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iPT Qii 



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THE CASe, LOCI^WBS^T^ffireAflO CO., 
HARTFORD, CONN, 



XLo tbe IRevcreD /Dbemoris 

OF 

LADY ALICE FENWICK, 

WHO DIED AT SAYHROOK POINT, 1645, 

AND 

To THE Dearer Memory 

OF 
ELIZABETH WEBB PRINCE, 

WHO DIED JUNE 30, 1896. 



" Rejoice and be glad with her all ye that love har ; 
Rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her." 



iN Saybrook's wave-washed height 
f^Bl '^^^ English lady sleeps, 
'""* Lonely the tomb, but an angel of light 

The door of the sepulchre keeps. 

^^ No roof — no leafy shade 
The vaulted glory mars, 
She sleeps in peace, with the light on her bed 
Of a thousand kindly stars. 

^^ She sleeps where oft she stood. 
Far from her native shore, 
Wistfully watching the bark as it rode, 
To the home she should see no more. 



<^ By grateful love enshrined 

In memory's book heart-bound, 
She sank to rest with the cool sea wind, 
And the river murmuring round. 

^^ And ever this wave-v/ashed shore. 

Shall be linked with her tomb and fame. 
And blend with the wind and billowy roar. 
The music of her name.^^ 
Written by Miss Frances M. Caulkins of New London^ 
January ji, 1868. 



(5) 




preface* 

|o MINGLE fiction with fact, to make char- 
acter drawings of those who leave 
scanty records beliind them, is like 
filling in the features of a beautiful or ugly 
face which is to leave as lasting an impression 
as any portrait or miniature. That such peo- 
ple lived, that they breathed, that they felt the 
weight at times, being human, of all this unin- 
telligible world, history bears witness ; while 
of the minds, the spirits, the material presence 
behind the outward act, even in the lives of 
more noted colonists she is silent. 

Those, therefore, who would in a later age 
build their fictitious fabrics on slight founda- 
tions of historic fact, undertake a task which 
should be most reverently executed, for they 
deal with those who have passed into silence 
and can no longer speak for themselves. 

The facts we have about Lady Fenwick 
herself could be easily compiled and stated 
in a very few pages. That she was tall and 
had golden hair we know. That she was relig- 
ious is also evinced by her membership in Mas- 
ter Hooker's Church in Hartford. That she 
was a faithful wife and devoted mother we 
have also proof. Of her fondness for fruits 

(7) 



8 Preface. 

and flowers, birds and animals, the meagre 
records also testify. That she was lonely and 
disheartened in this New World, yet bore up 
bravely, is implied. That longing- for England 
she died and was buried at Saybrook, which 
she helped to colonize, is a matter of history. 

I have tried to take these implied character- 
istics and develop them to their legitimate ends 
in the drawing of an ideal character. After 
some years' thought of her and study of these 
records I could not think of her otherwise than 
as beautiful and stately, a woman of strong 
mind and refined taste, of well-balanced judg- 
ment ; a helpmate to her husband, a Madonna 
to her children, of most gracious presence and 
most winning ways. She was one of those 
transplanted flowers that blossomed in the 
springtime of our country. She could not for 
long bear the cold winters or the hard life of 
the Colonist, but in dying she left behind her 
a breath of the spring. 

Records of such lives are like sweet pressed 
flowers, found in old family Bibles. Though 
the flower be dead the fragrance lingers. It 
penetrates other centuries, and breathes of 
something which in all ages has made life 
sweet and worth the living, bearing evermore 
constant testimony to the intense romance of 
History. e. m. m. 

Heartsease, Saybrook Point, 
April, 1896. 




|n the following pages I have tried to be 
true to historic dates, and in order to 
do this have thought it wise to be 
guided by one historic record and that which I 
have been assured by the best authorities is the 
most accurate. I am therefore chiefly and 
deeply indebted to Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's 
paper on the Fenwicks, which was prepared 
and read on the occasion of the re-interment of 
Lady Fenwick's remains at Saybrook in 1870. 
According to Dr. Trumbull, Governor Fenwick 
and his family landed at New Haven in July, 
1639. Shortly after their arrival their daughter 
Elizabeth was born. Their younger daughter 
Dorothy was born November 4, 1645. Lady 
Fenwick died shortly after her birth in 1645. 
Mr. Fenwick returned almost at once to Eng- 
land still in 1645 or early in 1646. He received 
his title of Colonel while fighting in the north 
in the cause of the Parliament. He died in 
Berwick, England, in 1656. 

In contemporaneous history the battles of 

Marston Moor and Cropredy Bridge, mention of 

which are made, both occurred in 1644, and that 

of Naseby in 1645. Herrick's <^ Hesperides,^^ 

1* (9) 



lo Historic and Unhistoric Notes. 

containing his poem ^^ Divination by a Daffodil, ^^ 
was not published until 1648, in London, at the 
Crown and Marygold in St. Paul's Churchyard. 
Thirty years had elapsed since the death of his 
master, Ben Jonson, and the poet was fifty-seven 
years old. During those years of troublous 
times for England he had been quite free in 
the circulation of his MS, poems, and it would 
not have been impossible that some of them 
found their way into Lady Alice's Common- 
place Book. Of the household of the Fenwicks 
at Fort Point or Pasbeshauke or Saybrooke, 
names all mentioned in Colonial history, the 
ladies, Elizabeth and Mary Fenwick, are men- 
tioned in the Winthrop Correspondence, also 
Rev. John Higginson and Dr. Peters. Of Peace 
Apsley and Oliver Bouteler and Warwick, the 
dog, no mention is made in Colonial annals. 
That Lady Alice had a young cousin and that 
her first husband, Sir John Bouteler, had a 
nephew would not be strange, and that both 
being young and comely, they should love each 
other would be but fulfilling one of the most 
natural laws of life. The artist party who dis- 
covered Peace Aspley's diary had also an his- 
toric counterpart, and during one autumn made 
many water color drawings from stenographic 
views taken of the old fort and Lady Fenwick's 
tomb, as it was before 1870. There are other 
interesting accounts of the Fenwicks and the 
early settlement at Saybrook, notably in ^^ Field's 



Historic a?td Unhistoric Notes. ii 

Statistical Account of Middlesex County,*^ ^^ His- 
tory of Middlesex County/^ ^^ Hollister's His- 
tory of Connecticut,^^ ^^Connecticut Historical 
Collections ^^ by Barber, ^* Dictionary of English 
National Biography ^^ (Articles Fenwick), ^^John- 
ston's History of Connecticut,^^ ^^ Benjamin 
Trumbull's History of Connecticut,^^ ^^A Gen- 
tleman of the Province,^^ the book of Saybrook's 
Quadrimillenniel, and others. 




a laD^ of tl^e €)lDen Cime. 

^^j^^HE house nestled down by the water- 
side, surrounded by fruit trees. It 
had a low porch at the side that was 
covered with trumpet creeper, and there were 
marigolds growing in the dooryard. A grape 
arbor led from the old-fashioned door to the 
gate, and the artist inmates of the house called 
it the loggia among themselves, because it re- 
called the vine-covered terrace" of the Cappu- 
cini at Amalfi, where some of them had once 
wintered. Outside the house had nothing to 
recommend it save that it was an unobtrusive 
brown foreground study against a lovely back- 
ground of early autumn landscape, in those days 
when summer clings to all her sweetness most 
tenaciously and autumn begins to draw her veil 
of purple haze over hill and valley. Behind 
the house an old stone pier covered with the 
rank, brilliant, golden-rod, which grows in 
deepest yellow and orange only in the salt air, 
ran out some little distance into a peaceful 
cove, and beyond a quiet river flowed north- 
ward. At all hours of the day white sails 
glided lazily past the house and became lost in 
silvery distance. Across the river, church 

2 (13) 



14 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

towers rose white against the crimson-purple 
background of the hills, and beyond the cove 
the coarse marsh grasses were turning yellow, 
red, and brown, the concentration of autumn 
sun and shade, in the keen air of cool mornings 
and chill evenings. A road ran past the house 
and ended in a sudden curve, and a green field 
and some brown stubbly fields beyond hid the 
view of where the river met the sea. Across 
the cove to the west other church towers rose 
every evening, etched sharply against a prim- 
rose or violet sky. This was the late September 
setting of the plain brown house by the Con- 
necticut roadway. Inside the house, life was 
simple, happy, and broad, for its temporary 
inhabitants were mostly citizens of the world, 
— seven cultured women, four of whom were 
artists, who were down there for an autumn 
holiday. 

If what Marie de Medici once said is true, 
^^ that woman is always young, she is always 
twenty in some corner of her heart, ^^ they were 
all young; all at that age where aspiration 
stretches out her hand to Fame, believing 
sooner or later they will meet in a close hand- 
shake. Every day the artists made their way 
across the fields to the wharves, the lighthouse, 
and the sea, and returned at noon or night 
with quick and rapid sketches of passing ships, 
of weatherbeaten men mending fish nets in the 
sand, of the lighthouse against a brilliant cloud 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 15 

effect, or of a sunset over the marshes. They 
studied the sea in its every mood, cahn, smiling, 
and indignant. Their sketch-books were full 
of sailors in every attitude and posture, and of 
the outline of trim, white yachts or ships with 
black hulks and weather-worn sails. Time 
was when the old harbor town with its pres- 
ent day picturesque lighthouse, breakwater, 
and wharves had seen much traffic. Ships 
that were not phantom ones had sailed 
slowly up the river from distant foreign ports, 
and the fort which once stood at the entrance 
of the harbor had figured largely in that which 
makes history. It was a great place for fisher- 
ies, and still within the memory of mortal man 
it was once equally a great place for clam chow- 
ders and Jamaica rum not always hidden under 
the rafters of old cellars. Salt tales of the sea 
were once in all men's mouths, and the place 
was full of the men who came back and had 
seen great sights all over the world, and of 
memories of the men who never came back at 
all. Old timbers and driftwood lying on the 
shore when the tide was low, the moaning pines 
over many ancient graves in the graveyard, 
rusting anchors half buried in the sand, all 
seem to tell the story that ever repeats itself, of 
a day that was past and of buried hopes. 

Perhaps the inmates of the little brown house 
were more impressed with the inner history of 
the place than anything else, for the house itself 



1 6 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

had a history not wanting in tragedy or romance. 
Flavia, who was their hostess, and who had 
lived off and on in the house for many summers, 
had found out that it had figured in Colonial 
records. In their little parlor, which was lit- 
tered with water-color drawings, sly caricatures, 
and sketches of each other, and more serious 
work on easels, as they sat round the fire wait- 
ing for the water to boil in the kettle on the 
crane for afternoon tea, and went to the corner 
cupboard for cups, they could not help wonder- 
ing who had lived there in all those years since 
the Revolution, or who else had boiled water 
in the kettle and gone to the cupboard for tea- 
cups. They had been told when they first went 
there that an English officer had been killed in 
crossing the threshold, though some one else, 
who presumably was not present, was positive 
he had been shot in getting into the house 
through the back window. That there had 
been much smuggling in those days there was 
little doubt. They had borrowed every book 
on Colonial history in the neighborhood, and 
spent much time in studying it evenings. They 
discovered that the modern method of smug- 
gling was far less picturesque, at least that one 
ran less risk of being shot in trying to avoid 
official gaze in introducing into the country the 
latest styles of Madame Paris. At least, so 
thought Maud, their most special artist, a pupil 
of Dupre in Paris, a happy denizen for some 



A Lady of tJie Olden Time. 17 

years of the Ouartier Latin, and thoroughly- 
conversant with the small talk of the Parisian 
studios. She discovered a trap-door under her 
bureau, and said it led to some cavern of unut- 
terable darkness, and it did, for it proved next 
day to lead to the coal-cellar. Somebody had 
taken occasion once during a dreary twilight, 
before the lamps were lighted, to tell them that 
some one had once fallen through that trap- 
door and never spoken again. Maud stuffed a 
comfortable under the bureau that night to pre- 
vent a sudden resurrection from the dead. 
Knowing they were intent on research, every- 
body kindly volunteered information, but as 
they voted not to be interested in anything that 
happened in this century, as it would be far too 
commonplace, the information did not always 
prove satisfactory. It left them, like hungry 
Olivers, crying for more. 

One afternoon Flavia, who had been to the 
post-office, came in with a most exciting piece 
of news. Maud was toasting wafers at the par- 
lor fire and Carlotta was passing around tea. 

^^ Girls! What do you think ?^^ she exclaimed, 
and then she went on to tell them how their 
neighbors not far off had only a few days before 
pulled down an old chimney, and found resting 
on the chimney-seat a pair of high -heeled white 
satin slippers. 

^^ White ! ^^ said Penelope. ^^ That sounds 
truthful. That chimney could never have re- 



i8 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

quired a chimney-sweep! ^^ But the others 
talked her down, and Maud proposed pulling 
down the dining-room chimney at once, to see 
whether they also could find any. 

Helen, the other special artist of the rival 
school of Dupre, and who criticised Maud's 
greens severely, was too absorbed in painting 
a fishing scene in the corner to pay much atten- 
tion, but Phillis, who kept house for them, was 
quite appropriately excited, and Penelope, who 
regarded all schools of art with patronizing 
favor, and was longing for some excitement 
besides the discussion of greens and ultramarine 
blues, favored the pulling down of the chimney 
at once. Adel lay back on the sofa and laughed 
a low, musical laugh. Every household has a 
center, and she was their center. Perhaps be- 
cause she was always in one place, perhaps be- 
cause a soothing kindness and brightness was 
her atmosphere, and from her frail form seemed 
to emanate a sympathy born of pain, because, 
as she said, ^^she had always to go on all fours, ^^ 
as her faithful crutches bore witness; as Flavia 
said, their household sun never went down, and 
round her every lesser planet of the house 
moved, as round the center of their being. 
Carlotta, who sat at the tea-table, was her in- 
separable companion. This was all of the 
household in the plain brown house by the 
Connecticut roadway : Maud, Helen, Penelope, 
Flavia, — artists; Phillis, Adel, Carlotta, — home- 



A Lady of tJie Olden Time. 1 9 

keepers, a very complicated art itself in the 
present day. 

Adel's laugh provoked discussion. She apol- 
ogized humbly, but said she did not believe in 
undermining old chimneys to find satin slippers 
of uncertain color. 

^^ I have already forestalled any objections, ^^ 
said Flavia. ^^ I have sent for a man to exam- 
ine the chimney, and after the bricks are all 
pulled down it would be nice to turn it into a 
dear, old-fashioned fireplace, like that in Shake- 
speare's house at Stratford on Avon.^^ 

^^ Why not turn the house into an Ann Hathe- 
way Cottage ?^^ asked Maud. ^^ I remember 
dining once at Charlecote Manor, not far away 
from Stratford, and being startled by my Eng- 
lish hostess telling me that the house fairly 
^ stank of Shakspeare.^ There, there, its a 
good, old English word, I know Carlotta is 
going to tell me, so I'll spare her the trouble. ^^ 

^^I was not looking in the dictionary, ^^ said 
Carlotta, looking up from a big book. ^^ I was 
only rescuing our ^Historical Recollections^ 
from an inundation from the tea cups.^^ 

^^ Carlotta has been poring over Colonial his- 
tory all the afternoon, ^^ said Adel. 

^^ What did you find out about this house ? ^^ 
called Flavia, taking off her hat in the hall. 

^^ Not very much, except in ^ Barber's Histor- 
ical Recollections ^ I found a letter written from 
New London, and dated x^ugust 18, 1779, which 



2o A Lady of the Olden Time. 

tells us something about our officer who was 
shot getting- into the back window.*^ 

« Read it,^^ said Maud. 

^^We hear from Saybrook that a boat lately- 
returning into the Connecticut River from Long 
Island, where she had been on an illicit trade, 
was stopped by the Fort at Saybrook, w^here a 
quantity of goods were taken out of the boat 
and lodged in the custody of one Mr. Tully, an 
officer of the fort, who stored them in his dwell- 
ing house.'' ^^ This house ! '' interrupted Flavia, 
impressively. ^^ On Sunday night, the 8th in- 
stant, eight men broke into the house with a 
view of carrying off the goods, on which the 
officer fired on them, killed two at the first shot 
and wounded another with a bayonet ; on this, 
the others made off, carrying the wounded man 
with them. A warning to this kind of gentry.'' 

^^ Dear me ! " exclaimed Penelope ; ^^ it does 
not sound half as romantic as it did before." 

^^ There is a map taken from President Stiles' 
Itinerary of Saybrook Point in 1793, which 
shows the position of our house and of other 
houses on the north cove ! " exclaimed Flavia. 

^^ How pleasant it would be to know more 
about the early settlement of the town," said 
Phillis, pensively. 

^^Carlotta and Adel ought to tell us some- 
thing about it. They have been simply spend- 
ing their time behind barricades of calf-skin 
books lately," said Helen. She had finished 
painting and joined the group about the fire. 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 21 

^^To most people,^^ said Carlotta, ^^ history, 
especially Colonial history, is not interesting- 
unless sugar-coated and taken in homoeopathic 
doses. To the earliest settlers coming here 
they found an almost unbroken forest. They 
found the oak, the pine, the walnut, the chest- 
nut, the cedar, and the tulip tree. They found 
many wild animals and hungry wolves by the 
thousands. They found an abundance of wild 
fowl, turkeys, geese, duck, and great flocks of 
wild pigeons in the spring and autumn. They 
found, also, the red man, a wild people, who had 
their own wild religion and deities. In 1631 one 
of these red men visited the Governor of Mas- 
sachusetts in the guise of a suppliant for his 
people. He described his country ^ as of a fer- 
tile valley, divided by a river called the Con- 
necticut.^ He begged that both the Plymouth 
and Massachusetts Colonies would send men to 
make settlements in this valley. Governor 
Winslow of Plymouth consented to consider 
this plea. In 1633 men came from Plymouth 
and settled at Windsor. The Plymouth Com- 
pany conveyed the whole territory, called the 
Colony of Connecticut, to the Earl of Warwick, 
which was confirmed to him by patent of 
Charles I. Robert of Warwick executed under 
his hand and seal the grant since known as the 
old patent of Connecticut, wherein he conveyed 
the same territory to Viscount Say and Seal, 
Lord Brooke, and others. Late in 1635 Jo^^n 



2 2 A Lady of the Olden Timt. 

Winthrop, the younger, came to America as an 
agent of Viscount Say and Seal, with instructions 
to go at once to the mouth of the Connecticut and 
to begin the building of a fort, to be built upon a 
large scale, and to embrace within its enclosure 
< houses suitable for the reception of men of 
quality.^ The horrors of that first winter at 
the Point,^^ exclaimed Carlotta, vaguely pointing 
out of the window as she spoke towards where 
the fort once stood, ^^ were beyond expression. 
The cold was intense, the snow deep and 
drifting, and it was followed by the horrors of 
the Pequot War. Then came the first written 
Constitution, adopted in a general convention 
of settlers in 1639. And it was this same sum- 
mer of 1639 that Lady Alice Fenwick arrived 
with her husband and other members of her 
household at Saybrook, for so the settlement 
was named, in honor of its original patentees. 
There had been a garrison kept up at the fort 
since its first erection by Mr. Winthrop in 1635, 
but no civil government was organized until 
the arrival of Colonel Fenwick. Among the 
first proprietors of this town were Captain John 
Mason, Thomas Tracy, Lyon Gardiner, who was 
the commander of the fort, and Thomas Lef!ing- 
well. The houses ordered had been built by 
Winthrop for gentlemen of quality in connec- 
tion with the fort, so that Master Fenwick and 
Lady Alice, his wife, experienced less of hard- 
ship in carrying out their plans than was usual 



A Lady of the Olden Tune. 23 

with the founding of new settlements. Say- 
brook at this time owed no allegiance to Con- 
necticut. She had her own independent gov- 
ernment, which was administered by Colonel 
Fenwick until the year 1644 or 1645, when it 
fell into the hands of Connecticut.^^ 

^^ Dear me ! ^^ exclaimed Penelope. ^^ I never 
appreciated before that a little history went 
such a long ways, especially when there are 
no delicious court intrigues. I've heard all 
that old calfskin can give me in one day. 
Let's make our knowledge practical by spend- 
ing the rest of the afternoon at Lady Fen- 
wick's tomb ! ^^ 

^^ Penelope ! ^^ exclaimed Maud, coming up to 
her and looking down into her face, ^^you are 
like all Americans before they have taken 
flight from the home nest, you would long 
since have gotten on your mental knees and 
stayed there before men who simply did their 
duty and struggled bravely against hardships, 
if you had lived in a country of Revolutions 
like France and saw what they did with their 
kings ! ^^ 

Phillis ended Maud's rebuke by appearing at 
this moment with the clothes' basket. ^^ If you 
are going to the graveyard, ^^ she remarked, 
^^you might bring home a basket of pine cones 
for our twilight fires, ^^ and the family obediently 
disappeared to go in search of cones, leaving 
Carlotta poring over her old books lovingly; 
and Adel dreaming of the past. 



24 A Lady of the Olden l^ime. 

Several days passed and the man whom 
Flavia had sent for to pull down the chimney 
did not appear. She waited till the fourth day 
and then started out with Phillis in pursuit of 
him. They walked for nearly two miles along 
a country roadside before reaching the town. 
It was the high carnival of the year for briars, 
brambles, and nettles, but they did not mind 
stopping to pick the odd, little stick-tights from 
their dresses, for the day was too beautiful not 
to study nature in her every mood. They 
noticed everything in that walk: the thistles 
blowing in the pastures, the meadows white 
with everlasting, just as everything around 
them was about to die, the milkweeds just 
bursting their pods with the wealth of white 
samite threads floating away on the September 
breeze, the gray green of the mullen spires 
against the fitful autumn sky, and the wayside 
tangles of Michaelmas daisies and golden-rod 
which they could not fail but gather as they 
passed. Phillis stopped, for her dress was caught 
in a blackberry bramble. Flavia tried to release 
her all in vain. And they laughed and talked 
and frightened a great flock of crows in the 
next field who rose with a Cassandra-like note 
in their ^^caw, caw,^^ as they flew southward. 

^^ They are singing the symphony of the dying 
year,^^ said Phillis, as she gave a final wrench 
from her thorny captor. 

^^It always seems to me,^^ said Flavia, "as if 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 25 

autumn, like a gladiator, flung its dying salute 
to the world and going out in royal scarlet and 
purple set life to a triumphal march. ^^ 

" Do you seriously think we shall ever reach 
the town at this rate ? ^^ asked Phillis, and they 
hastened on to find that their delinquent man 
had already gone to pull down the chimney and 
that their walk had been fruitless. So they 
gathered great bunches of bayleaf and sweet 
fern, with a view to their future hearth fires, 
and hastened home to find all the dining-room 
furniture on the side piazza and a dust pervad- 
ing the house equal to that of the tomb of the 
Capulets. The delinquent man had been loath 
to disturb a nice bricked-up chimney to find 
a possible pair of unmated, satin slippers, but 
the girls had been impervious to argument and 
so a heap of dust and bricks occupied the 
original site of the dining table and nothing 
was found as a result but a horrid dilapidated 
modern rubber shoe, which could not even be 
palmed off as a sandal of the early Greeks. 
The gentleman of the occasion carried a vic- 
torious smile on his countenance as he removed 
the bricks and mortar to the ash heap and went 
home and told his wife that there was not even 
an anatomical difference between girls and 
geese. 

■^ It is a good-sized fireplace,^^ said Flavia 
consolingly, but the girls were still very much 
disappointed about not finding high-heeled slip- 



26 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

pers and would not be consoled. They each 
took a hot biscuit from the kitchen table and 
went out to see the sunset, leaving Phillis to 
restore the dining-room to its original condi- 
tion; and it was she, who, kneeling on the 
hearthstone of the new made fireplace and 
moving the bricks in the chimney, discovered 
poked far up on one side the little, old, 
discolored book, with its queer, broken clasp, 
which was far to outdo any mere high-heeled 
slipper interest and was to keep Flavia busy for 
many a day. When they came in to tea an hour 
later she exhibited her new-found treasure and 
they all examined it. It was closely written 
from cover to cover in a fine, and at times, 
indistinct, handwriting. Flavia examined it 
more closely after the lamp was lighted and 
found it to be some sort of a diary written at 
Saybrook long ago by one Peace Apsley', who 
signed herself a cousin of Lady Alice Fenwick, 
who had come with her to this new world and 
who had lived with her at the old fort. The 
writing was so fine and cramped that Flavia 
had great trouble in making it out. 

<^ The spelling is so queer. It really needs to 
be translated into modern English to make any 
sense, ^^ she said. 

^^ Let us postpone the reading of it until Satur- 
day night when the house-uncles come down 
for their Sunday at the Annex, ^^ said Maud. 
<< Meantime you edit it.^^ 



A Lady of the Olden Tune. 27 

^^ Very well,^^ said Flavia. 

^^To think it is our last week down here/^ 
said Pliillis, sadly. ^^ I wish the house-uncles 
could spend the whole week with us.^^ 

But the ^^ house-uncles,^^ which was the girls' 
name for their male relatives, consisting of 
brothers, cousins, and would-be sweethearts, 
did not appear till the late afternoon train, 
Saturday, as was their wont every week, put- 
ting up nominally at the " Annex, ^^ the hotel at 
the Point, but spending their Sundays at the 
little brown house. Flavia worked like a Tro- 
jan that week at Mistress Peace Apsley's diary 
to forestall the criticism of the house-uncles. 
There was Richard, Helen's cousin, and the 
would-be swain of Phillis, Mark, and Luke, 
anything but two evangelists, though called so 
derisively by Maud, and Harry, who belonged 
to the Society of Physical Research and was the 
most famous teller of ghost stories before drift- 
wood fires on the American Continent. They 
arrived to find a supper of steamed clams and 
other fishlike productions that were eaten with 
a relish, and then, as it was a moonlight night, 
instead of gathering about the hearthstone, half 
the family disappeared in pairs into a moonlit 
world, so the MS. was not read until the next 
evening, which was chill and cloudy, and the 
warmth of the great open fire particularly grate- 
ful ; then, seated in the chimney corner, Flavia 
read to them her translation of the diary of 



2 8 A Lady of the Oldeji Time. 

Mistress Apsley, written at Saybrook in the 
years between 1639 and 1647. 

^^ 

The Diary of Peace Apsley, of Apsley Farm, 
Surrey, England, written while in exile with 
her cousin, Lady Alice Fenwick, at Fort Point 
or Saybrooke, during the years between 1639 
and 1647. 

I, Peace Apsley, spinster, write this record 
in exile to help me live through these weary 
days in a strange land. Outside I keep up a 
brave front, but inwardly my heart sinketh and 
when evening cometh and my dear lady and 
kinswoman no longer needeth my help and fel- 
lowship, I go and sit in the shady corner of the 
garden and look out over the sea and think of 
home among the Surrey downs and dream of 
the gardens I used to play in as a child. I can 
feel the breeze sweeping across the long grass 
of the meadows and hear the church bells ring- 
ing in the peaceful eventide, and see the rustic 
seat by the spring at the corner of the garden 
where my sister Rosell and I made cowslip balls 
each springtime. Ah me ! shall I ever see or 
hear anything of them again ? It was there at 
the beginning of the long meadow coming 
across the fields towards the stile where Rosell 
and I were standing, I first saw my Lady cous- 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 29 

in's nephew, young Oliver Bouteler, walking 
towards lis as the sun were going down. Shall 
I ever forget how he stopped a moment and 
looked across the stile at sister and me, as if he 
would fain speak, though prudence kept him 
silent, and then of how he turned in the curve 
of the meadow path and went away down the 
hill again as if he were walking away into the 
sunset, leaving us behind in dark shadow. 

" A handsome youth, ^^ I said to Rosell timidty. 
^^ One seemingly well favored of God and man. 
I wonder whom he may be ? ^^ But Rosell said 
sternly, ^^ Saw ye not he wore the King's colors 
and that he had too much scarlet in his doublet 
for a God-fearing man ? ^^ 

Rosell were surely but a few years older 
than I, but forsooth she were born an aged maid 
and had not grown any younger since. 

^^ Rosell, answer me this,^^ I said, as we passed 
through the garden flaunting poppy heads. 
^^Wherefor did God create such red heads as 
this if He wanted man alone to wear dun color 
till he put on his winding sheet ?^^ But she 
were too pious to answer me. I hate God-fear- 
ing men with a whine in their voice. She can 
marry all the God-fearing dun-clad men she can 
find if it please her, though on thought a woman 
should be the wife of but one man at a time. 

My eyes followed Master Oliver Bouteler as 
he walked away into the sunset and my heart all 
unknowing to myself followed my eyes after 



30 A Lady of tJie Olden Time. 

him down the meadow path, and when we went 
into the house there stood our father greeting 
him. He had come with a message of import 
from our cousin, Lady Alice Bouteler, to tell 
of her betrothal to one, a worthy gentleman, 
Mr. George Fenwick of Brinkburn, Northum- 
berland, a friend of my father ; and of Master 
Fenwick's recent visit to the new world colonies, 
where my father had interests. Rosell had 
gone into the house before me ; I had lingered in 
the garden and made a wreath of red poppies 
for my head and fastened a great bunch of red 
roses about my waist, to show my willful love of 
bright color ; so when I entered the great hall 
after her, where Oliver stood, his back to the fire- 
place, I was indeed a maid abashed and felt like 
Ophelia in the play. I gathered up my white 
dress and would have run away, but my father 
sternly called me, and I came back slowly. 

^^This is my daughter Peace,^^ he said, ^^ Mas- 
ter Oliver Bouteler. An idle maid with but a 
fool's heart. ^^ 

I looked up into Oliver's face. As he bent 
low our eyes met, and then forsooth our hands, 
while father frowned. He did not like me to 
make so free, and scolded me well afterwards 
and said : 

^^ A maid with true modesty did courtesy to 
the gentlemen, but kept her hands behind her 
back.» 

All the evening I sat there quiet, my poppy 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 31 

wreath and rose branch fading in the corner, 
while father praised Rosell as a good housewife, 
when Lisbeth, the maid, brought in the home- 
brewed ale and oaten cakes and Oliver unfolded 
the business which had brought him, not look- 
ing at me until the time came to say good 
night. Then he bent low once more over my 
hand, as if fain he would, cavalier fashion, press 
it to his lips, while I courtesied and he said low : 

^^Good night, Sweet Mistress Peace. ^^ 

Ah ! well a day! That were the beginning, 
but God only knoweth the end, as he knoweth 
the end of all heart aches. 

After my father had lighted him to his cham- 
ber he came back and rebuked me sternly for 
my forwardness, and then said to Rosell in a 
stern voice that, though he were obliged to re- 
ceive the message from his Lady Cousin and 
from his right good friend Master Fenwick, he 
loved not the messenger: that he belonged to 
an ungodly and God-defying generation, and 
had no fear of God in his heart, and was a de- 
fender of the King. 

I am not very old, but, for an ignorant maid, 
have noted some things which I will note here, 
and one thing is that few men be God-fearing 
men or brave soldiers to those who fight in an 
opposite cause. I understand not these things, 
but think that it be a matter for which no man 
should be faulted that he stand by his King and 
his church. 



^2 A Lady of the Olden Ti??ie. 

Master Oliver Bouteler left at sunrise next 
morning, after once more seeing- my father. I 
understood not fully at the time of the purport 
of his visit. Those were the beginning of 
troublous days for us and for England. Writ- 
ing now in this lone spot, far away from home, 
I can understand in part a little of what father 
told us. Sometime before His Majesty, the 
King, had dissolved his third Parliament, and 
had granted a charter to establish a colony in 
Massachusetts. My father's friend, John Win- 
throp, had sailed for Salem with a hundred men, 
saying: 

^^ I shall call that my country where I may 
most glorify God and enjoy the presence of my 
dearest friends. ^^ ^^ Our hearts,^^ he had said to 
my father and others, ^^ shall be fountains of 
tears for your everlasting welfare, when we shall 
be in our poor cottages in the wilderness. ^^ 

He hath also written from the new colony 
since: 

^^ We now enjoy God and Jesus Christ, and is 
that not enough ? I never had more content of 
mind.^^ 

Archbishop Laud of Canterbury, my father 
saith, hath persecuted many godly men, Puri- 
tan ministers, and doth encourage many Popish 
ceremonies, so that thousands are seeking the 
new world, where they may worship God as 
they choose. My Lord Warwick hath bought a 
fertile valley, called by some strange name, and 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 33 

the Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke hath 
purchased a great tract of land by the mouth of 
a goodly river. My Lady Cousin's betrothed 
husband, Master George Fenwick, hath been 
sent out to the Colonies to visit it, and, in re- 
turning, hath reported that John Winthrop hath 
already dispatched a number of men to the 
river's mouth to take possession. A fort hath 
already been built under the command of a 
brave man. Lion Gardener, once in the service 
of the Prince of Orange, and houses are being 
built inside the palisades. 

Master Fenwick, in his first visit to the new 
world, had greatly urged my father to go with 
him, but it were the summer before my mother 
died, and she were already ailing, and he would 
not leave her. Now Master Fenwick had 
returned, and he and my Lady had sent Oliver to 
apprise my father of their approaching marriage, 
and to urge that he would return with them to 
the new world, where he already owned lands. 

This was the condition we were in, in Eng- 
land, when I first met Oliver Bouteler. Once 
more he visited us, to urge that my father jour- 
ney to Teston in Kent, where my Lady still 
lived, near the estates of her former husband. 
Sir John Bouteler, and from whence she would 
shortly be married ; that he would be present 
at her wedding, and that if perchance he could 
not come, Rosell and I be allowed to travel with 
old Lisbeth, under escort of her nephew, Oliver, 



34 ^ Lady of the Olden Time. 

as she greatly desired the presence of her kins- 
folk, — all the more that it were through her 
cousin, Peter Apsley, of Apsley Farm, Thack- 
ham, she had first met Master George Fenwick. 
How my heart failed me for fear father might 
keep us at home, but, though he would not go 
himself, having little love for weddings or gaiety 
of any sort since my mother died, he bade Rosell 
and myself make ready to accompany Oliver 
under charge of old Lisbeth. He even called 
me to him and gave me a brave white satin 
bodice, with brocade petticoat of primrose silk, 
with a brilliant for my throat, which had be- 
longed to my mother in her youth; and Rosell 
a gray satin, which had belonged to her later 
years; and thus, well equipped, we started in 
the early summer days for the wedding, escorted 
by Master Oliver and old deaf Lisbeth. 

What can I tell thee, dear diary, of that jour- 
ney, of the meetings, and the handclasps, spite 
of the vigilance of Lisbeth and watchful eye of 
Rosell, who were fitted by nature to be a duen- 
na by an extra eye, I verily believe, in the back 
of her head. We said little, we looked much. 
Each flower by the roadside, from the day's-eye 
to the evening primrose, had its message, for 
Love hath a language all its own, as the birds 
have when they mate in the spring of the year. 
We journeyed between green hedgerows and 
summer forests, and rested one night at a com- 
fortable inn, and then reached Teston and the 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 35 

welcoming arms of the Lady Alice next day, — 
talking with our eyes of another wedding that 
might be when the next year were still young. 

It maketh me unhappy to think or write of 
that marriage and how I danced till the early 
morn in my primrose petticoat, and of how be- 
fore I left, Oliver and I plighted our troth in 
the dim old garden by the sun dial, which said 
on it : ^^ Post Nubila Phoebus. After clouds a 
clear sun.^^ Then we returned home once more, 
but this time Rosell took possession of Oliver 
and left me with old Lisbeth ; she would not let 
him speak to me, but would talk to him about 
the state of the times and of how the King were 
the ruin of England, — so we were not the merry 
party we were when we left Apsley Farm. The 
times and ourselves were out of joint. Rosell 
must have told my father something, for he 
treated Oliver with scant courtesy. So he abode 
one night with us and in the morning asked me 
of my father in marriage, like a right honorable 
gentleman, but my father answered him sternly 
that he would never marry his daughter to one 
who connived with popery, that he neither 
loved church nor «tate as it were then in Eng- 
land, and that he would sooner see me dead than 
wedded to a worshiper of Baal or the defend- 
ers of the devil's slave, for so he called the King. 
I heard it, for I was listening at the door, and 
my Oliver shamed me by his worshipful bow 
and said he would defer pressing his honorable 



o 



6 A Lady of the Olden Tijiie. 



suit until the happier days which would soon 
dawn. He left the house, but that evening sent 
me a message by old Bardolph, the gardener, to 
meet him at nine o'clock by the stile at the end 
of the garden, near the long meadow where I 
had first seen him, and then he told me all my 
father had said and that he was going away and 
that he could not tell when he would return. 
Then we again plighted our troth together in 
the moonlight, each vowing to be faithful to the 
other until death should part us. It was solemn 
as a marriage vow. He pressed a ring on my 
finger and I gave him the riband from my hair. 
He whispered every loving thing he could. I 
kissed him and that was our farewell. I can 
close my eyes and see it all now. I can feel 
that last heart clasp. I can smell the roses as 
they clambered over the wall and hear a little 
bird in the thicket, who wakened at midnight to 
sing a sobbing note at our farewell. The next 
morning I went to itiy father and told him 
everything, for there was nothing to conceal ; 
but he was greatly angered at me and told me 
^^ I were a pert maid without respect or mod- 
esty.^^ He kept me closely in the house, only 
letting me walk in the garden once a day, and 
Rosell proved a good jailer. I have naught 
against her. She were but an obedient child and 
I a disobedient and rebellious one. In the 
spring my cousin, the Lady Alice, was to sail 
with her new husband for the colonies, and 



A Lady of the Oldeii Time. 37 

coming to Thackham and seeing me pale and 
listless and hearing of the condition of things 
from my father, offered to take me with her, 
and I, longing to be with some one who knew 
and loved my Oliver, begged that he would let 
me leave home and seek my fortune with her in 
the new world. Thus we set sail from England 
the following April and after seven weeks, on 
the 20th of May, landed at Quillplack (New 
Haven) and from thence journeyed to this wil- 
derness, where we have been for nearly four 
years past. I did not realize in leaving England 
I was leaving Oliver, until at sea my heart sank 
low within me. He was right beautiful my 
lover, tall, with a carriage of much dignity and 
of great strength, with hair of fine spun gold 
and a face such as he might have had who 
served King Arthur in the olden time and saw 
the vision of the Grail. He were merry and 
master of all manly sports was Oliver, and he 
now may be lying with his dead face turned up 
towards the sun, moon, and stars for aught I 
know, or may ever hear. I can write this now 
when the miles of lonely water roll between and 
no ship ever cometh from England to bring me 
word of him. 

I have not yet writ at length of my lady cousin 
who is so good and kind to me, aye, and so brave, 
for oft I know her heart faileth her and she 
4 



38 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

longeth for the sight of home and kindred, yet 
keepeth up a right good heart. Oft as she sit- 
teth at work I love to watch her, for she be 
beautiful, tall and stately, with a head like a 
Saxon princess, crowned by pale brown hair 
that hath gleams of sunshine in it, that maketh 
it seem at times like gold. Yet it is not of that 
outward beauty that perisheth that most be- 
cometh the Lady Alice, it is that quiet repose 
and the spirit that shineth through her eyes that 
seemeth to soothe all that is troublous about her. 
I know not what my father may have told her 
of my story. I could but say to her briefly, ^^ I 
love your nephew Oliver. ^^ And then I ran 
away to drown myself in tears the day we left 
England, and that is all that ever passed be- 
tween us about my hopeless love, but sometimes 
at even when I look perchance sadly and long- 
ingly across the sea she hath come and stood 
beside me and rested her hand for a moment on 
my shoulder soothingly, and I have felt that her 
thoughts had wandered back like mine to the 
old home, her lost youth and her first love. 
Then her eyes, with shadows in them like those 
of coming tears, have met mine, and then she 
has turned and glided away down the garden 
path, her gray dress rustling against the prim 
box border as she passed, and she has left me 
feeling, though not a word has been said, that 
she feeleth for me and knoweth that the wide 
and cruel waters that roll between this new 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 39 

world and home, divide forsooth my body from 
my spirit, and that I left my heart behind me in 
England when I sailed away. I can remember 
when I was a child the first time I saw Lady 
Alice. She had come back to Surrey with her 
first lover and husband. Sir John Bouteler. She 
was young and gay then, with a face as bright 
as a fruit tree on a May morning. She were tall 
and graceful, with a delightsome voice and 
laugh. Not that in musing I would give a 
thought that she be any way indifferent to her 
present lord, Master Fenwick, he somewhat 
grave and serious, having weighty matters rest- 
ing upon his shoulders in the establishment of 
a new colony. My lady cousin furthereth all 
her lord's concerns with gravity and judgment, 
only I knoweth she longeth many a time for 
England, the home of her childhood, the scene 
of her early married days. 

When we first came into the wilderness we 
suffered something of hardship, though Master 
Chapman hath assured me that with a strong 
fort and with many houses already built our 
hardships were nothing to what they did under- 
go who did first come here; how they could 
not sleep of nights with the howling of hungry 
wolves in winter, and for fear of the sudden 
attack of the Red Man, who hath been quiet 
since a bloody war that they had before 
our coming, v/herein much blood was shed. 
But it seemeth to me still much hardship to 



40 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

abide for long surrounded by savages and with 
wolves that howl so piteously in winter, though 
now we have aright goodly house and garden in 
the fort, and my lady hath lately united with 
Master Hooker's church in Hartford. The baby 
Elizabeth, who be named for our revered Aunt 
Elizabeth Apsley, hath been baptized. We be 
situated at the mouth of a beautiful river 
where it meeteth the sea, and for so short a 
period the Lord hath greatly blessed us in our 
undertakings. Our household here now consist- 
eth chiefly of the Lady Alice and her husband 
and Mistress Elizabeth and Mrs. Mary Fenwick, 
with grave Master Higginson as chaplain, and 
the baby Elizabeth. There be also many gen- 
tlemen supporters of Master Fenwick, of which 
I have met a few, notably Master Robert Chap- 
man, Captain John Mason, and Master Lion 
Gardiner, whom I especially favor, though he 
be no longer young. Master Higginson be rec- 
ommended to us by the reverend gentleman 
who came with us from England, Master Henry 
Whitfield, who is now settled at Guilford, to 
whom my lady gave some of her best cows of 
the stock we brought over, when we parted 
from him after landing at Quillpack, July 15th, 
1639. 

#%» 

Good Master Higginson returned yesterday 
from Hartford, bringing with him some garden 
seed that hath been much grown yonder, and a 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 41 

healing herb for my lady's garden. Her flower 
garden beareth, after some years' care, many 
a dear flower of old England, of poppies 
and roses and daffodils, while yonder on the 
sunny slope on the south side of the fort is the 
herb garden from which my lady maketh many 
a soothing posset for the sick. Thither the 
bees and butterflies resort all summer days, for 
here grow mint, marjoram, anise, sweet basil, 
catnip, lavender, coriander, and summer savory. 
Surely this new world be right pleasant in 
spring and summer. The sky here is bright 
and clear, and they grow many strange flowers 
such as I never saw before. In the woods at 
springtime I have found sweet pink and white 
blossoms, and along the borders of the marsh- 
lands in August, where I have ventured with 
Warwick, my lady's noble hound, for company, 
I have found tall mallows with great blossoms, 
pink as roses, while in autumn the fields be 
yellow with strange branching, golden blossoms 
and purple with daisies of Michaelmas, but never 
a primrose or cowslip have I seen here. The 
winters are hard and the wind it bloweth fiercely 
and ofttimes snow lieth deep on the ground 
from November to May, and we dare not ven- 
ture forth but for a breath of fresh air, but sit 
dolefully in the chimney corner, while logs are 
piled high and the fire is the only thing to 
brighten this cheerless world of snow. 'Tis in 

these long days that my lady cousin shineth 
4* 



42 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

as the sun and brighteneth us all by telling 
many a story of her youth or of the Surrey 
countryside, or by singing hymns and songs. 
Indeed, musick be to us all a great solace. My 
lady brought with her from England a most 
profane instrument, a lute of ungainlie height, at 
which Master Higginson looketh doubtfully as if 
it were an instrument of sin, and methinketh Mis- 
tresses Mary and Elizabeth Fenwick thinketh it 
also contributeth to undue levity when we think 
gravely of the destiny that awaiteth our immor- 
tal souls. I confess to thee, my diary, my sinful 
thought that the Devil should not have all the 
good musick, for if so, to us who be young it 
maketh Hell an attractive, not a gruesome 
place. I love, like King David, the sound of 
psaltery and harp, but like best of all the right 
merry music to which he danced before the 
Lord with a good heart. What if my father 
should see this ? He would think me given 
over to the evil one, and I do fear me much 
that my heart foUoweth too much after gaiety, 
and that I would rather dance this very moment 
than to say my prayers. How well it be, there- 
fore, that my father be safe in England and 
cannot read this wicked little book of mine, 
wherewith I wile away the weary hours. My 
lady is so sweet she offendeth no one, but sing- 
eth hymns and psalm tunes with good will, 
while Master Higginson and the Mistresses be 
by, but when we are alone she singeth the love 



A Lady of the Oldeii Time. 43 

songs of her youth, and those which were of 
fashion in England when we left home. There 
be one I especially love, written by Sir Charles 
Smedley, which she singeth with great sweet- 
ness. 

" Hears not my Phillis how the birds, 
Their feathered mates salute ? 

They tell their passion in their words, — 
Must I alone be mute ? 

Phillis without frown or smile, 
Sat and knitted all the while. " 

^^ 

My lady also brought with her a book of old 
madrigals and catch songs, together with graver 
poems. She hath copied many of a certain 
Robert Herrick, a gentleman and scholar, whom 
she had known in England, for she hath great 
taste and somewhat a gift herself at poetry, 
and many a weary afternoon hath she wiled 
away for me as we sat at needlework, with bal- 
lad and tale, and when the time seemeth heav- 
iest she will talk to all of us of the promises of 
my Lord Northumberland and of the many 
others who were coming from England to settle 
at Saybrooke, so that when spring cometh we 
have been all of us on the lookout for coming 
ships. My father, when I left England, extolled 
to me so greatly the housewifely virtues of my 
dear lady that I thought not of her other gifts 
and charms, but indeed hers be of the right 



44 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

kind of piety that saith little but doeth much. 
Though her great Bible with its silver clasps be 
always open on the window seat in her chamber, 
wherefrom she doeth read daily on her knees, 
she be not an apt quoter of Scripture. Then, 
too, she hath a love for all living things, for 
birds and beasts as well as fruit and flowers, 
and knoweth with little study the name of each 
and the season thereof. She hath tamed the 
wild pigeons till they feed from her hand and 
hath brought into gentle captivity for the little 
Elizabeth a whole colony of rabbits, which alone 
do give us much occupation. Yet with all these 
gentle traits she be a brave lady with naught 
but the fear of God in her heart, for she of ttimes 
ventureth far into the wilderness with naught 
but her good gun and faithful dog. 

To-day I have picked some strange flowers 
of lavender color under large, brown leaves 
and my lady hath had some planted in the 
garden. This day week we received some trees 
as a gift from Hi? Excellency, Governor Win- 
throp, and hath set them out about the house. 
Master Fenwick hath written to His Excellency 
thus wise : 

^^ If we have anything that could pleasure you, 
you should freely command us, as I am pretty 
well stored with cherry and apple trees of the 
apples you sent me last year, but the worms 



A Lady of f/ie Olde?i Time. 45 

hath in a manner destroyed them as they came 
up.^^ This did I write with my own hand to 
His Excellency, Master Fenwick, dictating, for 
which I received in payment a great compli- 
ment, that my hand was as my face, sweet and 

well favored. 

lulu 

Dear diary, thou hast been but a wavering 
companion written at long intervals these near 
four years past, but henceforth I will endeavor 
me for a time, at least, to keep a daily or weekly 
record of our life, for perchance if I should ever 
again see Oliver, he might like to know how we 
had passed these dreary days. 

May ist, 1645. — May Day, and I did not rise 
at five to wash my face in honey dew in the 
meadows, as was our wont at home, so that we 
might carry a bright face the rest of the year. 
I thought it not worth while, as there was 
no one to be bright and gay for, but at ten 
o'clock there was great excitement among us 
because of the arrival of a messenger from 
Boston from His Excellency, Governor Win- 
throp, with important despatches for Master 
Fenwick, and letters and packets which had 
come in a ship to Boston several weeks before. 
How happy was I when my lady gave me a 
letter and a packet from my sister Rosell, after 



46 A Lady of the Olden Tune. 

Master Higginson had finished one of his long- 
winded morning prayers. I could hardly wait to 
open it till I reached my chamber, when I found 
that Rosell had sent me a blue figured dimity 
with a white kerchief and lutestring ribands to 
make it fine with ; but forsooth who is there to 
dress for in this fort save perchance Master 
Higginson, who is of a faith too grave to care 
for the gauds of a maid ! I be not in Boston, 
sister Rosell, or in Hartford, where me heareth 
at times there be some gaiety, and life be not 
all prayer meeting and sleep, but at a lonely 
fort in the wilderness at the end of a long river, 
always looking out to sea for some one to come 
from England, and before my eyes one face, 
and listening for one footfall. Such is the sad 
teaching of love to women that they look on one 
and he becometh their world ! I care not for 
the dimity and the ribands, for I care not for 
the swains of this new world, though some there 
be that favor me. I care much for thy letter 
and even for the message from my father, who 
hath exiled me from all I love. Foolishness it 
be for me to write thus to thee, my book, never- 
theless, will I copy my letter from Rosell, angry 
as it hath made me, for it came from England 
and it may be all I shall ever receive from 
there, and it might be lost perchance. 

^^ Sweet Sister Peace: ^^ she writes, ^^Long 
have I waited for a safe messenger to carry 
thee these trifles, that by them thou mayest 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 47 

bring the new world gallants to thy feet when 
thou goest to Boston. I can see thee in thy 
new gown with the ribands fluttering and the 
kerchief about thy neck, and the brilliant which 
our father gave thee sparkling at thy throat, 
dancing perchance in some country dance, as 
we used to dance at Apsley farm on winter 
nights; as you danced one night with the right 
worthy Master Ducksworth in the oak parlor, 
in the pink satin bodice and green petticoat. 
Dost remember ? Ah me ! The times be 
changed. Lonely it is in the oak parlor of 
afternoons with no sound of laughter from the 
garden, and our father be greatly puzzled at 
the state of the times. No one cometh here 
but Master Ducksworth, knowing that I be 
fearsome and low of heart. Great things have 
happened since thee left England. A great 
man, Oliver Cromwell, who hath our father's 
full confidence, and who be a worshipful friend 
of Master Ducksworth, hath risen in our cause 
to lead our down-trodden people. He had 
raised a regiment of strong, brave men, fighting 
in the cause of the parliament and they have 
gained for us the Battle of Marston Moor. 
Father be now away with them and the days 
pass heavily. The King is with his routed 
army at Oxford, and now I would tell thee 
something of thy Oliver. Tear him out of thy 
heart, for he be unworthy of a true maid's 
fancy. His father, who forsooth was changed 



48 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

from plain William to Sir William by our weak 
King in 1641 hath already fallen at Cropredy 
Bridge last year. Thine Oliver is now Sir 
Oliver Bouteler, and with the King at Oxford, a 
friend of Prince Ruperts and thy father's 
enemy. Through such as these our country 
has been brought nigh to ruin. Let not thy 
heart follow after him any more than it 
would after strange gods. This is the time to 
tear from out thy heart all unruly affections, so 
our father says, and to labor and pray right 
hard for those who fight for the deliverance of 
the people. He saith with Cromwell, ^God 
make our enemies as stubble to our swords.^ I 
doubt not but thy lover still love thee well, but 
love thou not him. We must follow this most 
worshipful leader, Oliver Cromwell, and hate all 
those who have brought this trouble upon us. 
Think well of what I tell thee, and if some 
serious and godly man of the new colony, such 
as be Master Ducksworth, ask thee to share his 
fortune, it would surely please our father much 
if thou wouldest consent thereunto, for it would 
give pledge that thou hadst forgotten thy old 
and unworthy love, who followeth after Beelze- 
bub and hath been led captive by the priests of 
Baal. I send with this our most constant love 
to our worthy cousin, the Lady Alice, and her 

spouse. 

«Thy Faithful Sister Rosell.» 

To think I have laid waste so much paper to 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 49 

copy this letter which maketh my heart to burn 
with anger. What care I for Cromwell and his 
cause ? My heart is with Oliver, with the King 
at Oxford, My lover is a brave soldier. Rosell, 
what doth she know of love ? a parrot writing 
but what our father saith, forsooth, and quoting 
to me Master Ducksworth. What's Master 
Ducksworth to me ? Worth ducks and nothing 
more ! Content myself with some man of this 
new world wilderness ? It is well for her she 
can write of the trouble and stir in England 
for one who hath dwelt nearly four years one 
day like another and who would give all she 
hath for trouble and stir rather than to live 
through ceaseless days each like the other. Is 
not England a kingdom, and why should men not 
serve their king ? Did I not promise to love 
Oliver, and do I not well to stand beside him ? 
This also I know full well, if women had their 
way there should be no more war, but men 
should live at peace ! The Lady Alice came 
into my room this even, looking pale and sad. 

*^ Little Peace,^^ she said sorrowfully, ^^ there 
be strange news from home.^^ I noted the way 
she said home and it brought dew to my eyes, 
for it voiced all that sad longing I had in my 
own heart. I handed her my letter from Rosell 
and she sat down in the window seat and read it. 
She smiled only once towards the end, and then 
looked grave again. My heart was hard. 

^^ Rosell has never loved,^^ she said, as she 



50 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

laid it down. ^^ I do not bid thee tear thy love 
from out thy heart. I bid thee only turn it 
upward; keep it still. It is God's sacred gift to 
us. It must be trained, for it is human; it can- 
not be killed, because it is divine. Child, I have 
known often that thy heart has gone outward 
after thy lover; think of him less; think of thy 
love for him more. He may never come back 
to thee. Wilt thou repine ? Wilt thou let it 
grow bitter or wilt thou have it grow sweeter 
each year a soothing posset for sick hearts ? 
Ah ! nurse thy love. I tell it thee who have 
also loved, yet loved not in vain. Let thy love 
make thee brave for the whole, wide world. 
Sweet Peace. ^^ Then she turned and I saw the 
sunlight, as it seemed to follow her, as I lost 
the sound of her light footfall on the stairs, and 
my heart had grown soft as she spoke as if it 
belonged unto a little child. 

May 6, 1645. This morning I have been 
taking down much instruction from my lady as 
to the use of certain healing herbs, though for 
many of these one might seek in vain at Fort 
Point. There be herb two pence that be a cure 
all, and the juice of buttercup doth stop sneez- 
ing, St. Anthony's turnip be an excellent 
emetic, and bindweed, pimpernel, and wood- 
ruffe be cures also for blood and liver. I shall in 
the leisure time of summer make pillows of 
sweet thyme, mingled with poppy seed, which 
be excellent to bring sleep to weary eyes, so 
saith my lady. 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 51 

There be talk at the present time of Master 
Higginson soon leaving iis to become assistant 
of Rev. Henry Whitfield at Guilford, for which 
I confide to thee alone, my diary, that I shall 
not grieve if this be true. He be a righteous 
young man, but I like not over righteous young 
men, however grave they may be when they 
be old and have wedded twice, perchance. 
Master Higginson seemeth to have a liking for 
me, and I doubt not that if I favored his suit 
there mJght be a wedding at Fort Point before 
he left for Guilford, but indeed this may not be 
so, but beneath the fancy of a modest maid. 

June 2, 1645. A great surprise hath come to 
me, for to-day I hath received a letter which 
came in a packet from Boston for Master Fen- 
wick. It be written in a handwriting exceed- 
ing precious to me and which maketh my 
heart to beat quickly. Surely the times be 
changing, as I told my lady, when last night I 
saw the moon over my left shoulder. Soon, 
perhaps, we shall hear of ships coming to har- 
bour here or in Quilpack. My Lord North- 
umberland and the other patentees of the new 
colony will come here and build goodlie houses 
and plantations and my lady will no longer look 
pensively across the sea and I can dance in my 
sprigged dimity here without going to Boston. 
But all this is not what I would write of, but of 
my letter from my true love, that so thrilleth 
my heart. This is what he hath written unto 



52 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

me lonely and grieving at this Fort Point by 
the sea : 

<< Dearest Heart : — England and all the 
world's at war because my Peace hath forsaken 
her country and dwelleth among strange folk 
across the sea. The light hath gone and must 
somewhere be rising over the new world. I 
wonder in these troubled days of civil war 
whether thy heart still beateth true to one who 
espouseth the royal cause and would die for his 
King? If our cause seem lost and I can no 
longer serve His Majesty I shall seek for Peace 
over the water and verily not find it until we 
are made one, for I am a Peace-loving man and 
must be wed to Peace before my heart stop 
wandering, ^ chasing dim phantoms over path- 
less seas,^ as saith the poet. I wonder how and 
where this letter may find thee. I have sent it 
to one who is scribe to His Excellency, Gov- 
ernor Winthrop, hoping against hope that it 
may sooner or later find thee. When shall I 
look into thine eyes and feel I have found thee 
beyond all peradventure ? No man hath found 
such Peace as I have found in thee, my be- 
loved, or such large content as I shall have 
when we meet again. Behold my heart hath 
already gone half way across the sea to meet 
thine, see that thine cross the other half to 
meet mine, sweet Peace of the new world. 

« Thine Oliver.^^ 



A Lady of tJie Olden Ti/ne. 53 

This be a verse or two of a right merry song 
penned by my friend, Sir Richard Fanshawe, 
for ^^ the Saints' Encouragement ^^ : — 

<^ Fight on, brave soldiers, for the cause ; 

Fear not the cavahers ; 
Their threat'nings are as senseless, as 

Our jealousies and fears. 
'Tis you must perfect this great work, 

And all malignants slay ; 
You must bring back the King again 

The clean, contrary way. 

^^ The true religion we maintain, 

The Kingdom's peace and plenty ; 
The privilege of parliament, 

Not known to one of twenty ; 
The ancient, fundamental laws ; 

And teach men to obey 
Their lawful sovereign ; and all these 

The clean, contrary way.^^ 

I know not what to think of Sir Richard's 
verse, save that it seem not respectful to either 
King or Parliament. It do make my head to 
ache to think which may be right or wrong, for 
verily there be good men on both sides. But 
war aside — 

Did ever maid receive a greater reward for 

being true to her true love ? After long silence 

and loneliness and doubt if he be alive or dead, 

to have the silence broken by such sweet melody. 

5* 



54 ^ Lady of the Olden Time. 

I kissed the letter eighteen times this morning, 
after reading it twenty-five, and then went out 
into the garden to read it over in quiet. The 
daffodils nodded over the garden borders, the 
birds sang as if their throats would burst, the sea 
looked bluer than ever it had done since I left 
England, the sun shone as it never shone before, 
and I wondered why my eyes had been blind to 
so much beauty. I took up my lady's book of 
love songs as I passed out, and after I had re- 
read my letter and locked it safe up with draw- 
ings strings against my heart, I turned, for 
greater comfort, to the book, and read some of 
Master Shakspeare's sonnets and some written 
verse of Master Herrick, copied full neatly in 
my lady's own hand, and one written by another 
was marked, and some one, forsooth, had written 
a date against the lines, the date of Lady Alice's 
first courting in breezy Surra}^, in the old Thack- 
ham gardens, writ one idle summer day: 

<^ There is a garden in her face 

Where roses and white lilies grow, 

A heavenly paradise is that place 
Wherein all pleasant fruits do grow, 

There cherries grow that none may buy, 
Till cherry-ripe themselves do cry. 

*^ The cherries fairly do inclose, 

Of orient pearl a double row, 
Which, when her lovely laughter shows, 

They look like rosebuds filled with snow. 
Yet them no peer nor prince may buy, 

Till cherry-ripe themselves do cry. 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 55 

<< Her eyes, like angels, watch them still. 
Her brows like bended bows do stand, 

Threat'ning with piercing frowns to kill 
All that approach, wath eye or hand. 

These sacred cherries to come nigh, 
Till cherry-ripe themselves do cry.^^ 

^^ Reading love songs, Mistress Peace ? ^^ said a 
voice beside me, and I looked up like a fright- 
ened bird and half-hid my book, for grave Mas- 
ter Higginson stood behind the garden seat, 
looking down upon me with a searching look in 
his eyes. 

^^ Yes,^^ I answered, pettishly. Then he hand- 
ed me, with a strange, new gallantry, four daffo- 
dils he had just plucked from, the garden. 

^^ Wear these as a nosegay, Mistress Peace; 
they well become thee. Thou lookest like 
April, as thou sittest there in the sunshine. 
Dost remember what Master Herrick writeth 
of the daffodil in Lady Fenwick's song book ? ^^ 

^^ When a daffodil I see. 

Hanging down his head towards me, 
Guess I may what I must be ; 

First, I shall decline my head ; 
Secondly, I shall be dead ; 

Lastly, safely btuied.^^ 

And he, too, forsooth, bent his head like the 
daffodil, low down a-toward me, looking into my 
eyes so close I felt his breath on my face, as if 
he fain would ask a question. 



56 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

<^ First, I shall decline my head ; 
Secondly, I shall be dead; 
Lastly, safely buried. ^^ 

did I repeat after him as I arose. ^^ Good 
Master Higginson, I know you will rejoice with 
me, for I have to-day received right goodlie 
news from England, telling me of the health 
and good faith of my one true love, who 
fought like a brave soldier at Marston Moor, 
and who, when last he wrote, was with the 
King at Oxford. That is the reason, good 
Master Higginson, thou findest me like a 
picture of April, reading love songs by the gar- 
den wall.^^ And I left him standing there, 
breathing heavily, looking far out to sea. Later, 
in the twilight, when I passed through the gar- 
den, I beheld four daffodils lying dead on the 
garden seat, waiting to be safely buried, and I 
could not refrain from saying to myself: 

^^ First, I shall decline my head, 
Secondly, I shall be dead, 
Lastly, safely buried. " 

Oh! Master Higginson, grave Master Higginson, 
surely thou thyself could have had but a pass- 
ing fancy for one so gay, so trifling as this little 
Piece. 

June 16, 1645, Master Higginson talketh of 
leaving us, and my heart is grave, for I fear me 
much I may in some way be the cause. My 
Lady looked somewhat sorrowfully this morn- 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 57 

ing, when I came in from feeding the rabbits 
and sat down to needlework. She had confer- 
ence with her husband, and later she came unto 
me and said : 

^^ Thou hast caused sad unquiet and grief of 
heart, Mistress Peace, to a good man. Master 
Higginson be sore smitten of thee. Hast thou, 
plighted to another, in no wise given him 
cause ? ^^ 

I could not bear that my lady cousin should 
look at me thus gravely, but said that it were 
surely a passing fancy of the good Master. 
That even if my troth were not already plighted 
I should make but a sorry show as the wife of 
a godly minister, and my feet were going to a 
roundelay in my head as I talked, till I looked 
up and saw the Lady Alice's face filled full with 
grave reproach. 

^^Talk not so lightly, Mistress Peace, ^^ she 
said. ^^ The greatest gift God giveth woman is 
the gift of a good man's heart ; it may not be so 
lightly spurned. ^^ And then I answered, with a 
shake of my head and with spirit, 

^* Dear Lady, what can I do with two, but 
keep the one already accepted and reject the 
other. I cannot marry two. ^^ But I could bring 
no smile to my lady's face. All she said in 
answer was this : 

*^If Master Higginson remain with us, I beg 
of thee to remember that by promise thou art 
as wedded wife to another man, and there be 

3* 



58 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

others here whom I have noted thou treatest far 
too lightly. I like not thy way of meeting 
Master Huntington in the garden yester even- 
ing, nor thy free way with Master Baldwin when 
thou didst greet him yester morn. Because we 
dwell in a wilderness, dear cousin, there be no 
excuse for forgetting we be gentle folk. I like 
not to speak to thee thus, but thou hast com- 
pelled me so to do.^^ And she left me with a 
very sore and angry heart, going like a windmill 
in my breast. Surely I cannot wear weeds for 
Oliver from morn till night. I be young and 
the blood be not yet sluggish in my veins. I 
like Master Huntington's glance of admiration 
as I pass, and to have gay speech with Master 
Baldwin, but I love none the less my Oliver. It 
be all the fault of the godly minister, who hath 
inclined his godly head and heart towards a 
pert maid. So, dear diary, between ourselves I 
consign these dog rhymes of mine to Master 
Higgins, for forsooth I will not be courted by 
any Higgin's son. 

A dog rhyme written by Mistress Peace Aps- 
ley at Fort Point, June 16, 1645, and dedicated 
to the right worshipful minister, John Higgins. 

Master Higgin's love lies bleeding, 

While I pen this roundelay, 
I, relentless and unheeding, 

Turn my face the other way. 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 59 

Master Higgin's heart is broken, 
I won't mend the broken piece, 

He to me no word has spoken, 
I won't come to his release. 

For forsooth, it is immodest, 

For a maid unspoken to, 
To wear her heart outside her bodice, 

Or bashful lover to pursue. 

Master Higgin's sore offended, 

All because of little me, 
Soonest gone is soonest mended, 

Better from the devil flee. 

Cupid's dart or Satan's arrow 

Interfere with Gospel lore. 
Stick in even saintly marrow. 

And there's always room for more. 

^^ Daffodils for divination ;^^ 

Master Higgin's are in vain. 
Don't forget your ordination. 

In the mazes of Love Lane. 

June 30, 1645. — I still be in something of dis- 
grace, for Mistress Mary Fenwick looketh at me 
severely and my lady hath not sought my com- 
panionship of late. Can it be because of Master 
Higginson ? How do the best of women exalt 
the godly minister and standeth him upon a 
polished stool and worship him above the com- 
mon man, and wherefore should they, seeing 



6o A Lady of the Olden Time. 

they be not uncommon, but of common clay, and 
shall equally dissolve to dust like to ourselves ? 
I be not righteous, so I understand not these 
things, but seeketh much the companionship of 
Warwick, noble dog, and seek to know why 
at times when one is sad of heart the brute 
doth read the mind and mood and comforts by 
silent sympathy — and preaches unending ser- 
mons of deathless faithfulness from eyes lumi- 
nous with love and gratitude, — when man f ail- 
eth to understand. Talking to Warwick and 
looking into his honest face I have renewed 
my vows of deathless love to Oliver, for I would 
be ashamed to be outdone by a brute in faith- 
fulness. 

Midsummer nearly, and my heart is very sad. 
I be a most grave maid these days, quite far 
apart from mirth, for time passes and no mes- 
sage cometh from England. Ah, well a day ! 
Master Higginson still be with us, more serious 
than before and praying longer prayers. My 
Lady Alice is not well. Let me whisper it to 
thee, my diary, that in the autumn for comfort 
during the long winter days God will send her a 
blossom of springtime to nestle at her breast. 

^^ God hath greatly blessed me,^^ she said to 
me yester eve, ^^ for he hath sent me two chil- 
dren in this new world to comfort me for all I 
have left in the old. My little Betty is a con- 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 6i 

stant joy, but she is fast forgetting- her baby- 
ways. Thee will find some day thyself, little 
Peace, that when a child nestles and lifts its 
little hands helplessly, then is a mother's fullest 
joy, for it is even yet as a part of ourselves and 
draweth its life from us as we draw our life 
from the Father of all. Poor men, they cannot 
understand this,^^ she added low, as her husband 
came in with many papers of importance, to tell 
her of his appointment as one of the commis- 
sioners of the United Colonies at New Haven. 
He hath also received a letter from the court, 
desiring him ^^ if occasion will permit him to go 
to England to endeavor the enlargement of the 
patent and to further other advantages for the 
C£>untry.^^ There be talk of selling the Fort, as 
the gentlemen who thought of coming from 
England hath seemingly abandoned their pur- 
pose of emigration, and there be therefore little 
reason for our continuance here. I shall not 
soon forget the days of this long summer, when 
we have sat together working on little gar- 
ments, or how calm and sweet my lady's face 
has grown in the thought of her little one and 
the white spirit that would join it at its birth. 
Once only has she voiced the light in her eyes ; 
it was as she fashioned the little shirt to lie next 
the beating heart. 

^^ Such gifts are a gift of the Holy Ghost, ^^ she 
said, *^ Sweet Peace. ^^ And a silence fell upon 
us that seemed to be none the less filled by the 
6 



62 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

stirring of wings. I love to record these 
thoughts of my lady in thee, my diary, because 
I want of her a picture for all my living days 
which will linger when perchance the vision of 
her comeliness and beauty be gone, as of a mind 
stored with all strong and goodly thoughts, as 
of a garden enclosed wherein grew all manner 
of fragrant flowers and refreshing fruit for way- 
farers. She seemeth in these days to have no 
longing for the olden-time and talketh but little 
of the past. 

December 15, 1645. — ^ long, sad pause in 
thee, little diary, and it be a heart-broken maid 
that would record the days of our life at Fort 
Point since midsummer waned. Yet will it be 
some comfort, now that winter is upon us, to 
write of these days which have aged me and 
made me think like a sober maid. Through 
the summer we received no news from Eng- 
land. September came and the air became cool 
once more, for these new world summers be 
over warm. The great masses of woodland 
over the river grew hazy and purple, and at 
nights we sometimes saw strange lights of In- 
dian fires. Great flocks of birds daily flew 
southward, and as we neared October the apple 
trees which Governor Winthrop sent i:s were, 
for the first time, heavily laden with red and 
yellow fruit. The days grew shorter and 



A Lady of the Olden Time. Gt^ 

shorter, and after the sun had set the night be- 
came so cold that one could fancy that winter 
were no longer in hiding, though he wore a 
mask of yet warm sunshine by day. We were 
right busy in October preparing for winter, and 
my lady directed all things to be put in readi- 
ness for our comfort, and oversaw all that she 
ordered to be done. In the early days of No- 
vember her little one came to her waiting arms, 
and was called Dorothy, because, my lady said, 
she was indeed the gift of God. She was a 
sunny little maid, and we needed much the sun- 
shine, for after her coming winter set in grim 
and cold. I was always with the Lady Alice 
now, for she seemed to recover her health but 
slowly, though she were deeply happy watching 
the little face beside her, which seemed to be 
the summing up of her content. One night 
when I was sitting beside her she asked whether 
I had again heard from England and from him 
my heart loved best, and I showed her Oliver's 
letter, and she said it were the letter of a Chris- 
tian man and one whom she herself loved. 

^^ Be very true to him. Peace, ^^ she said, ^^ and 
sooner or later thou shalt have thy heart's de- 
sire. ^^ 

I would fain show by this how niy lady felt 
toward Oliver, for there be some who would 
blame me for disobeying my father and cling- 
ing to one who were not of my belief, but 
though she were true to her own high thought 



64 A Lady of the Oldeji Time. 

and followed after her husband in her desire 
for freedom of worship, and condemned the 
King, and believed that the days that were 
coming to England tinder the leadership of the 
great Cromwell, whom Master Fenwick had 
known and seen much of in earlier days, were 
better than those gone before, yet, forsooth, her 
heart spoke louder for me than her head, and 
she were ever one of those high-minded folk 
who see good everywhere in friend or foe, and 
dwelleth more on points of agreement than 
those of difference. 

I pressed her hand as I answered firmly, ^^ I 
will be true to Oliver Bouteler, thy nephew and 
my affianced lord.^^ 

Then the little Dorothy cried, and we both 
forgot ourselves in soothing her. That night 
as I was braiding my lady's hair and rolling it 
up beneath her white cap, she drew my face 
down to hers and kissed me gravely and ten- 
derly. 

^^ Last year,^^ she said, ^^when my husband 
thought of returning to England I could scarce 
contain myself for joy, but the year passed and 
found us still at Saybrooke, and now I feel it 
has been all for the best. Someone had to 
leave home and come and make the desert 
blossom as the rose; as well I as another. This 
colony will grow, and mayhap some day those 
who come after me may think gratefully of me. 
Learn contentment here, as I have. I am 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 65 

happy now, and no longer watch for ships far 
out at sea.^^ 

I know not why, or ever knew, why my father, 
after my mother's death, had me christened 
Peace, for I be of a most turbulent mind ; but 
as I listened to the Lady Alice I became for a 
time quiet like my name. I left her with the 
baby Dorothy asleep on her arm, little thinking 
of the morrow or what the night might bring 
forth. It was towards midnight that Mistress 
Elizabeth came and roused me. 

^^ Hasten ! ^^ she said, ^^ if thou wouldst see thy 
cousin yet alive, for she is ill unto death. ^^ 

I rose quickly and hastened to her bedside. 
A sudden change had come in the night, and 
her heart had failed her. When I reached her 
she could no longer speak. Master Fenwick 
held her in his arms, that she might breathe 
more easily, and the little Dorothy still rested 
beside her. Mistress Mary brought in little 
Elizabeth to bid her farewell, and she smiled 
graciously upon us. The passage home was 
short. An hour later her frail body was silent ; 
her soul was in a fairer port. It was then I 
realized all the Lady Alice had been to me, and 
of how, by her gracious smile, rather than over- 
grave word, she had won my heart's devotion 
and guided my giddy fancies and wild hopes. 

When I saw her in the morning her beautiful 
hair was smoothed back from her brow, her 
hands were folded across her breast, her sweet 

6* 



66 A Lady of the Olden. Time. 

eyes were closed, they no longer watched for 
ships far out at sea. The little Elizabeth had 
laid a branch of red oak leaves at her feet, and 
her head rested peacefully on a pillow of the 
white everlasting flowers, gathered from the 
fields a few weeks before. She lay there in 
state like a queen, with a smile of unsurpassing 
joy on her face, while all in our little colony 
gathered about her to do her homage, and old 
Warwick guarded the door of the room where 
she lay. We laid her to rest on one of those 
mild days of sunshine which do make us think 
of summer, though winter be already here. We 
covered her grave with pine and oak branches, 
and came back through the desolate garden, 
trying to comfort our sad hearts with thought 
of her quiet assurance forever, leaving Master 
Fenwick still standing over the place where she 
lay, as if stunned with his own death blow. 
This hath all happened in this sad November 
of 1645. 

There be talk now of the return of Master 
Fenwick to England, and last night he sent for 
me and gave me my choice, either to return 
with him or remain, but he hath plainly stated 
unto me that he goeth to England to endeavor 
the enlargement of the patent, and that if he 
be unsuccessful he may never return. He gave 
me to the end of the week to think of it, but 
my choice hath been already made to remain 



A Lady of the Olden Ti7ne. 67 

beside the quiet grave yonder which containeth 
precious dust, which hath in it the germ of 
everlasting life. It hath also been decided to- 
day that the Mistresses Mary and Elizabeth 
Fenwick remain here with the two children, 
tmder charge of our new chaplain, Dr. Thomas 
Peters, who came to us this year, Master Hig- 
ginson having gone to be with Rev. Master 
Whitfield at Guilford. 

December 20th, 1645. Yesterday Master Fen- 
wick left us, and hath left a sadly vacant spot 
behind. My heart almost failed me at the last 
that I went not with him. My heart hath lost 
all its spring these days, and is buried in my 
lady's grave. The Baby Dorothy hath grown 
into a winsome little maid, and be our great 
consolation. I hath no word from England, 
and I almost believe Oliver is dead. How do I 
regret my sins of insobriety when I longed for 
all men's praise. At times the last word my 
lady saith cometh to me with comfort: ^^ Be 
very true to thy lover. Peace, and sooner or 
later thou shalt have thy heart's desire. ^^ But 
I cannot, nay, I can never say with her that I 
no longer watch for ships far out at sea. Spite 
of the dreariness the winter is passing quickly. 
The snow lieth heavily upon Lady Alice's grave, 
but yesterday there came a day that had a 
breath in it of the spring. 



68 A Lady of the Olde?i Time. 

Since last writing the little Dorothy hath 
grown to look more like my lady, and much 
care of her hath set me dreaming as to what 
my own children will look like. There will be 
six of them I be fully determined, and I hath 
already named them in my heart, for indeed 
one be put to sore straits for amusement during 
these long evenings, and it is for my children 
and children's children I keep these records 
of their mother's and grandmother's life at 
lonely Fort Point. At this moment I stop and 
look into my tiny copper mirror and find myself 
not altogether old or ugly. My mirror, in fact, 
telleth me pleasant tales every time I look into 
it. I like my hair, and my face forsooth be 
not ill-favored. I shall be quite content if my 
six children, for whom I write this diary, look 
like me; especially do I hope the girls will 
have my mouth, which more than one swain 
hath told me be right kissable. Now more than 
ever am I feared at the thought that aught but 
myself behold these pages written for my six 
children, when for aught I see I may sign my- 
self Peace Apsley, Spinster, to the day of my 
death. The hound Warwick hath moaned 
greatly since my lady hath gone, and yester 
even I found him lying by her grave. He 
watcheth by Dorothy when she sleepeth, as if 
he had been left in charge of her. Verily, next 
to a good home and those that make it, from 
grandam to babe, a good dog friend should be 
the most to be sought and valued. 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 69 

And now, dear diary, I have come to that 
part of my story when I am slow to record, 
even for mine own eyes alone, what hath hap- 
pened in these early spring gloamings when we 
can once more live in the free air. I fear much 
that this might fall into the hands of those who 
would think me over-credulous, yet I wish for 
my own and my children's sake to record it, for 
to me the memory of what I have seen is sweet 
and w^holesome, not dreadful or gruesome. One 
evening nearly a month ago I were standing at 
my old place near the garden wall, in the early 
twilight. I could hear Elizabeth laughing as 
she were going to bed, and Mistress Mary's 
grave voice bidding her be quiet. The birds 
had not stopped singing their even-song, when 
I heard a sound behind me, though perhaps it 
were less a sound than a breeze of soft and 
fragrant air, a sense of a presence near me, and 
then I turned and held my breath, for I saw 
my lady, just as of old, coming down the garden 
path in her dress of gray, and the last light of 
evening rested on her head like a golden coro- 
net. She seemed to be coming from the house 
and turned neither to the right nor left. A 
smile was on her face. Then she suddenly 
vanished and it seemed only natural that she 
should have been there visiting her children 
before they went to sleep. I did not think of 
it as a coming back from the dead. Every night 
for three weeks I sat there at the same time, 



70 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

watching for her coming, and each night she 
appeared, then slowly vanished over the water; 
but one night she turned towards me and I 
felt her presence coming nearer and nearer, and 
I smelt something like the odor of violets in the 
spring. Something soft seemed to touch me, and 
I felt restful and sure that the future would 
bring a blessing, and that after waiting I should 
gain my heart's desire, more than any day since 
she went away. Next morning I had been out 
with Baby Dorothy to feed the rabbits, and the 
little white things were running all about my 
feet, glad as we were to be in the sunshine. I 
had fed my lady's birds and all the little living 
things she had loved and cared for, I had 
weeded the flower border and tended the herb 
garden, when I heard Warwick give the deep^ 
baying bark with which he always greeted 
strangers, but forsooth I thought not much of 
it, for I had heard Dr. Peters say to Mistress 
Mary that he expected Master Robert Chapman 
to see him that day on matters of business and 
dispatches recently received from New Haven, 
But when later Mistress Mary called, bidding 
me come in and tidy my hair, for there be some 
one awaiting to see me, my heart beat wildly until 
I stood in the living-room, and there he stood, 
my lover, tall and unharmed, and twice as 
bonny as when I last saw him, though some- 
what graver withal ; and neither Mistresses Eliz- 
abeth nor Mary being present, but just we two 



A Lady of the Olden Time 71 

alone at last, I did what a maid's heart hath 
prompted her to do in all ages when she seeth 
her lover returned from the wars, — flung my 
arms around his strong neck and buried my 
face on his shoulder, and asked him a hundred 
questions and called him a thousand loving 
names, and knew not whether my name were 
Peace or Mehitable, or whether the war was 
over or whether my mirror lied, but did know 
that it were peace for me all over the earth at 
last, and so he said also that Peace was declared 
for him, as soon as I allowed him breath to 
speak. 

Of all we said and of all we thought and of 
all we planned that day, the 4th of May, 1646, 
not even diaries may tell. It seemeth a year, 
though it be but a few days ago. Those who 
have waited and watched and grown heart-sick 
and then have had it cease will know, and to 
those who have not it would be hardly worth 
the telling. 

'¥¥ 

That evening Oliver told us all that had 
happened in England during the past year. He 
had left home, being no longer of use to his 
King, and in answer to a message from Master 
Fenwick, through my lady's good word for us, 
bidding him seek me at Fort Point, and for her 
dear sake he had given him letters to His 
Excellency, Governor Winthrop, and others 



72 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

high in authority, that he coming almost as 
a fugitive to Massachusetts should nevertheless 
not be unfavorably received in these new 
colonies. He had, moreover, saved something 
of his private fortune, though the family estates 
were confiscated. His father, Sir William 
Bouteler, had been killed at the battle of Cro- 
predy Bridge two years before, and he, too, had 
been seriously wounded at Naseby June 14, 
1645, and for many days his life had been 
despaired of. He described unto us the rout- 
ing of the battle of Naseby, when even the 
royal papers fell into the conqueror's hands, and 
the final surrender at Bristol which took place 
last September. Up to the new year he had 
lain ill of his wounds, and recovering, had seen 
Master Fenwick and had set sail from South- 
hampton for Boston in March. He had had a 
fair voyage, and landing in Boston and carrying 
his letters to Governor Winthrop, had already 
received a position in the commonwealth of 
Massachusetts, and naught now remained but 
for me to become his wife and return with him 
to Boston, stopping for a brief space in Hart- 
ford, where he had been liberally entertained 
by the Wolcotts and Master Sherman, who had 
known my lady, and who desired greatly to 
behold his bride, of whose beauty and favor he 
said they were already fully assured. 

^^ Oliver, ^^ said I, blushing for his saying this 
before them all. " I am not prepared to marry 



A Lady of the Olden Tinie. 73 

thee so quickly. It be a weighty matter to 
decide without thought. How can I marry 
without my father's consent and without telling 
Rosell ? This I said weakly, for indeed I knew 
not what to say. But Oliver caught my hands 
and looked gravely down into my face. 

*^ Little think we shall ever wed, fair Peace, if 
thou wait for thy father's consent, and that 
thou knowest full well ? Thy father be chief 
friend to Cromwell, and thy sister Rosell was 
recently betrothed to one Master Ducksworth, 
a kinsman of Fairfax, one of the routers of 
Naseby, whom thou hast known in the past.** 

Then up spoke Dr. Peters and said that 
Master Fenwick had already spoken to him of 
the possibility of our marriage and that in these 
troublous times it were a great thing for a 
maid to have a true and faithful man for a pro- 
tector, and that Mistress Mary already knew of 
the quest of young Sir Oliver and approved the 
marriage. That at any moment the settlement 
at Saybrooke might be left by them, for if 
Master Fenwick did not return in a few years 
he had given orders that his children should be 
taken to him. 

^^Doth thou desire this man for a husband, 
Mistress Peace ? ** he asked, as I still delayed 
my answer. 

*^ Sometime,** I said at last, faintly, *^but I 
would like more time for courting.** 

*^ Nothing stands in the way of thy being 

7 



74 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

joined together save thy wayward will, young 
mistress. Thy lady cousin desired it and thou 
hath the consent of all present, and surely 
through five years thou hast had time enough 
for thinking. ^^ 

Then I turned and held out my hand to 
Oliver and said: 

^^ I will be thy wedded wife.^^ And Dr. Peters 
held our hands together for a moment and the 
Mistresses Mary and Elizabeth kissed me, and 
when I went up stairs to bed I heard them 
planning together about my wedding clothes, 
as if I had no part in the matter. 

Two days later. This morning I arose and 
looked out towards where the sun was rising 
over the river, where only a few years since 
Pequots and Narragansetts fought like savage 
men. All was calm and peaceful, and as I 
beheld the brown houses of our little settle- 
ment, I felt loath to leave it. I have to-day 
taken from my chest the blue-figured dimity 
and the white lute-string ribands which Rosell 
sent me. Little did I think it would ever be 
used for my wedding gown. Mistress Mary 
hath been helping me to fashion it and hath 
given me a kerchief of fine lawn and Mistress 
Elizabeth a jewelled heart which belonged to 
Lady Alice. Masters Mason and Huntington 
liath also been here to-day to bid me joy, and 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 75 

the news of my marriage hath spread among 
all who dwelleth at Saybrooke. They be some- 
what grave, for it be no matter for merriment 
this bringing of the wilderness into captivity, 
yet a wedding be a wedding the world over. 
It hath the sound of fiddles in it and it be full 
of right hearty love and good will. 

Yesterday we were married, and they said I 
looked not unlike a bride in my dimity over 
a white satin petticoat, and Oliver liked me 
the better for the blue forget-me-nots on my 
gown. As I was looking my last in the mirror 
little Elizabeth brought me a bunch of daffodils 
from the garden and I wore them, all unmind- 
ful of poor Master Higginson and the four dead 
daffodils that lay a year ago on the garden seat. 
I need not Master Herrick's divinations now. 
We were married in the garden under one of 
John Winthrop's apple trees which had blos- 
somed on purpose for my wedding day, and the 
sun never shone and the birds never sung more 
merrily than on the morning of May 10, 1646. 
Afterwards we had a wedding feast and much 
fun and laughter, and everyone said they would 
miss me, and for a brief space Lady Peace 
Bouteler were the most important woman in 
the whole united colonies. Warwick came to 
my wedding with a white cockade tied to his 
neck and the rabbits were let out to make all 



76 A Lady of the Olden Tifue. 

the havoc they could, and Baby Dorothy cooed 
like a wood pigeon, as she sat on Master Bald- 
win's coat on the grass, as Dr. Peters pro- 
nounced us man and wife. I am sure if we had 
been in old England we could not have had a 
merrier wedding. To-morrow we begin the 
long journey to Boston, going through Hartford, 
where Oliver's friends await us. Last night 
Oliver and I visited my lady's grave in the 
moonlight and I laid my wedding flowers in the 
shape of a star upon it and prayed I might be 
as good a wife as she had been. Afterwards 
we sat together on the garden seat and said 
pleasant things to each other, while the moon 
made a silver track across the water. Then it 
was that once again I saw my lady dressed all 
in white walk down the garden border and 
wave her hand in blessing and farewell ere she 
vanished in the silver moonlight on the sea. I 
had told my husband all about her, and though 
he could not see her as clearly as I could, he 
still thought he saw a shadowy figure standing 
on the waters' brink before it faded into silver 
light. 

To-day we leave old Fort Point forever, 
though Oliver, my husband, saith ^^ forever be a 
long time.^^ Now that the parting hour hath 
come, such is the changeableness of woman, I 
am loath to depart. I love the river where it 
peacefully weds the sea. I love much of our 
life, and mostly do I hate to leave baby Dorothy, 



A Lady of the 01 Jen Time. 77 

and the spot where my dear Lady Alice Fenwick 
sleeps until the resurrection morn. But my 
last hour here has come and I must end this 
little book that hath been the solace of so many 
weary hours. I wonder, a little timidly, of 
what lies beyond the vast forests to the north- 
ward wdiere I must begin a larger book of life, 
but whatever the future may hold I and my 
true love, now imited forever, shall meet it 
henceforth hand in hand. Thus little book, writ- 
ten not now for my impossible children, I sign my 
new name, token that all's well that ends well. 

Peace Bouteler. 
Fort Point, Saybrooke, May 13, 1646. 

Flavia ended the narrative and left a pensive 
group about the fire. She glanced over toward 
the corner where Richard and Phyllis sat behind 
the tea table and thought she saw their hands 
meet behind the tea cups, but it might not have 
been so, for they sat in deep shadow. The drift- 
wood which Mark and Luke had brought in, in 
the early raorning, had nearly burnt itself away, 
though Harry had been constantly in care of it 
and built the fire in economical fortresses, with 
Penelope to help him. He said it was because 
of her name, the Lady Penelope of unraveled 
webs, that when Flavia had finished the fire was 
smouldering and only occasionally bursting 
into flame. Maud had been sketching the four 



78 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

men as they sat in the firelight. Carlotta 
promptly lighted the parlor lamps and stole 
from the room to beat up a Welch Rabbit and 
for beer. Thus ends all romance in mundane 
things. Harry went to the kitchen for more 
wood and rebuilt the fire. The wind was blow- 
ing a regular Pequot-Narragansett War gale, 
across the old north cove, and it suddenly came 
upon them that it was their last night in the 
old house. Others might come next summer as 
Flavia's guests, but they might never come 
agfain, and a little chill of sadness stole over 
them, until Adel asked Flavia some question 
about Peace Apsley's diary which loosened their 
tongues. Whether the MS. was true or not, 
they all believed in its authenticity, and were for 
having it either made known to the public or 
registered among colonial records. Mark was 
very doubtful about the genuineness of the dog 
rhyme to Master Higgins, and they were left in 
doubt as to whether it were written by Mistress 
Flavia of the 19th century, or Mistress Peace 
of the 17th century. 

<^ Just how much of that did you write your- 
self ?^^ asked Luke. 

^^ I rewrote the whole of this diary. I had to 
often supply words and sense, but I changed it 
as little from the original document as possible, ^^ 
answered Flavia with dignity. 

" The two Evangelists had better be careful 
what they say,^^ said Maud. ^^Luke ought to 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 79 

be called ^doubtful Thomas^; he was mis- 
named.^^ Phillis and Richard here became anx- 
ious to know what became of Peace Apsley and 
her husband after they had left Fort Point, and 
Flavia again grew suspicious of those shadowy 
hands behind the cups. The little party broke 
up when Carlotta announced supper in the din- 
ing-room, and an hour later the men sallied 
forth into the teeth of a northeast gale and re- 
turned to the little hotel at the Point, leaving 
the maidens to retire for their last night's sleep 
under the old roof tree which for several hun- 
dred years had sheltered so many sorrowful or 
joyful hearts. 

^^Dear old house,^^ said Maud, as she went 
about with Flavia closing blinds and shutting 
down windows. ^^ What a jolly, good time we 
have had in you ! How many people have had 
a jolly, good time in you ? Your walls should 
fairly crack with laughter, your beams jump up 
and down for joy. You should be called Merri- 
ment Cottage or Laughter Lodge ! ^^ 

^^ Shades of the Puritans ! ^^ exclaimed Phillis 
sleepily from the other room. ^^ Remember 
Maud, you belong to a sober commonwealth. 
You're not in Paris, just come back from the 
Opera Comique. It is past midnight. Put out 
the lights and go to bed. ^* 

Next day they were all scattered, and the old 



8o A Lady of the Olden Time. 

brown house by the roadside had entered into 
its long winter rest. They persuaded Flavia 
that her time could not be better employed than 
in carefully editing the treasured MS., and in 
investigating into the final destiny of each of 
the inmates of the Fort in Peace Apsley's time, 
as they all desired the narrative to end like an 
old-fashioned play with all the characters on 
the stage and blissfully or otherwise disposed 
of. 

Of the subsequent career of Colonel George 
Fen wick, she found that in July, 1646, he was 
appointed by Parliament one of the commis- 
sioners to estabhsh and secure peace between 
England and Scotland. In May, 1647, he was 
serving the army in Ireland. The next year 
he was in the north with his friend. Sir A. Hasel- 
rigge. Governor of New Castle, acting for the 
Parliament. In 1648, he commanded Northum- 
berland's newly raised regiment, and in July 
he participated in a gallant victory against 
Langdale's forces under Sir Richard Tempest, 
for which a public thanksgiving was ordered by 
Parliament. In October, 165 1, he was appointed 
one of the commissioners for the affairs of Scot- 
land, a commission in which he was associated 
with Chief Justice St. John, Sir Harry Vane, 
General Monk, and other leaders of the parlia- 
mentary party. Other records also say that he 
was appointed, but did not act, as a judge in the 
trial of Charles I, 1649, ^s he had also been for 
many years a lawyer of Grey's Inn. 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 8i 

In 1652, he was made governor of Berwick, 
and in November of the same year he married 
at Clapham in Surray, for his second wife, Kath- 
rene, daughter of Sir Arthur Haselrigge. 

In 1656, Colonel Fenwick was returned as a 
member for Berwick in Cromwell's new Parlia- 
ment, but he did not meet with the approbation ^ 
of the council, Cromwell being now supreme.' 
His last appearance in public life is as one of 
the subscribers to a remonstrance addressed to 
the Speaker of the House, September, 1656, 
inveighing against the unwarrantable usurpa- 
tion of power and infringement of the liberties 
of Parliament by Cromwell. 

He died in the ensuing spring, and his epi- 
taph in the church at Berwick reads thus : 

Col. George Fenwick, 
of Brinkburn, Esq. 
Governor of Berwick in the year 
1652. 
Was a principal instrument of causing this church 
to be built, and died March 15th, 1656. 

A good man is a public good. 

After Peace Apsley's departure from Say- 
brooke, the family lingered there only till the 
children were old enough to be carried to their 
father in England. The little Elizabeth mar- 
ried her cousin, Roger Fenwick of Stanton, 
while Baby Dorothy, the younger sister, mar- 
ried Sir Thomas Williamson of East Markham, 
in Nottinghamshire, and afterwards of North 
4* 



82 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

Weartnouth Hall, County of Durham. She died 
Nov. 4, 1699, on her birthday, aged fifty-four. 

Mistress Elizabeth Fenwick, Colonel Fen- 
wick's sister, married May 20, 1648, Captain 
John Cullick, a prominent citizen of Hartford 
from 1648 to 1658. He removed with his wife 
to Boston in 1659, where doubtless his wife once 
more met Peace Bouteler. He died there in 
January, 1663, and the Mistress Elizabeth made 
another venture on the matrimonial sea and 
married Richard Ely of Boston. She had a son, 
John Cullick, by her first husband, whb gradu- 
ated at Harvard College in 1668, and two 
daughters, Elizabeth and Mary. Elizabeth 
married Benjamin Batten of Boston, and he it 
was who erected the monument to the memory 
of Lady Fenwick as it now stands, as appears 
by the receipt of Matthew Griswold, given in 
1659, and recorded in Saybrook. 

Of Mistress Mary Fenwick, Flavia could find 
no record, save that the winter after Peace Aps- 
ley's departure from Fort Point, there was 
found an uncertain record of the death of one 
of Colonel Fenwick's relatives, which, as nought 
further could be found of Mistress Mary, might 
have been that lady. 

Of good Master Higginson the accounts were 
brief, save that after serving with Rev. Henry 
Whitfield at Guilford, he was called to minister 
to the church in Salem, where he remained a 
faithful minister of God's Word imtil he was 
called to the Heavenly Salem beyond. 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 83 

In 1647 the first fort within the enclosure of 
which Lady Fenwick was buried was destroyed 
by fire, and in the following year the new fort 
was built close to the river's brink, the earth- 
works of which are within the memory of 
many still living, as it was not destroyed till 
1870. 

Flavia looked in vain for further records of 
Peace Apsley, but found out absolutely nothing, 
and had almost given it up in despair until one 
day she was invited out to dinner in Boston by 
some friends whom she had met while traveling 
in England, but whom she had never visited 
before. She found them living in a charming 
house, and dinner was served in a delightful 
oak wainscoted dining-room, hung with family 
portraits. Flavia, who sat opposite the fire- 
place, was especially attracted by the portrait of 
a very beautiful young woman, in a filmy dress 
of blue and white, with a single brilliant on a 
piece of dark velvet round her throat. Her 
head was set against a background of apple 
boughs, and she wore daffodils on her breast 
and in her hair. Flavia became more and more 
attracted by the charming face, full of wit and 
brilliance. The brown hair was brushed up 
from the forehead and fell in little rebellious 
curls about the delicate pink shells of ears, 
while the blue eyes seem to gleam with secret 
laughter. Presently the conversation fell on 



84 A Lady of the Oldeit Time, 

family portraits, and their host discoursed flu- 
ently on Copley, Gainsborough, and Stuart, 
while he made his wife nervous by wiping his 
fingers vigorously on the priceless doylie under 
his finger bowl, a habit some men have. What 
he was saying, however, was far more interest- 
ing to Flavia than all the lace doylies in Chris- 
tendom, for he gave her opportunity of asking 
about the portrait opposite her. Then Madame, 
her hostess, fiushed with honest pride and forgot 
all about the crushed doylie. 

^^ That is a portrait, ^^ she said, ^^ of my ances- 
tress, Lady Peace Bouteler, who was a great 
beauty and leader of society here in early colo- 
nial days, but who returned to England after 
the Restoration. Let me see, I think she had 
some connection with your early Connecticut 
history, for she came out with the Fen wicks and 
settled at Saybrook in — well, some time in the 
17th century. I have so much to do I can never 
remember dates. ^^ 

^^ Was her maiden name Peace Apsley ? ^* 
asked Flavia. 

^^ Yes. What a memory you have for history! 
I did not know she was prominent enough to 
have found her way into the colonial records. ^^ 

Flavia smiled and dipped her finger-tips into 
the rose-colored finger-bowl contentedly. After 
dinner she went and stood for a long time in 
front of the fireplace, looking into the face of 
Peace Apsley, painted in her wedding gown. The 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 85 

happy smile, the delicate hands told the story of 
peace and plenty. Flavia closed her eyes for a 
moment and summoned back the vision of that 
old colonial life, until she could almost smell 
apple blossoms and pick daffodils. She thought 
also of the dear house party and their last night 
in the old house. Of Richard and Phillis, now 
married; of Harry and Penelope, engaged; of 
Helen and Maud, back in Paris, leading the old 
artist life, and of one of their company who had 
gone a long journey to the better land. Then 
she opened her eyes again and found Peace 
Apsley looking down into her face, with the 
same frank smile, and it seemed as if she were 
meeting some dear old friend once more, and as 
if no time had passed since the portrait was 
painted, long ago. 

^^ You seem fascinated with my ancestress, ^^ 
said her hostess beside her. 

^^ I am,^^ said Flavia. ^^ Tell me more about 
her? Did she go back to England and what 
was her subsequent life ? ^^ 

Her hostess laughed. ^^ I am so sorry I can- 
not tell you ; you see it all happened so long 
ago, and to tell you the truth the present is so 
much more interesting, and I am so much in- 
terested in diet-kitchens and education and 
Buddhism. ^^ 

And with that Flavia had to be content, and 
she was, for she always felt after that as if she 
had seen a vision of Peace just as Peace Apsley 



86 A Lady of the Olden Time. 

herself once saw the white vision of Lady Fen- 
wick come down the garden path at Fort Point. 

Things have changed now down at the old 
harbor town. Thirty- five years have perhaps 
wrought more changes than in all the centuries 
before. The fort has gone, not a vestige of it 
remains. Huge iron birds, full of blackness 
and smoke and moulten fire, with death in their 
path fly on steel rails across where once the old 
colonial life was lived, across the garden where 
Peace Apsley used to sit and where the Lady 
Alice once stood looking wistfully across the 
blue waters. Lady Fenwick now rests with 
many others in the old graveyard at the Point, 
who have served the state and commonwealth 
in past days. Her grave, which was a lonely 
landmark for so many years, ceased to be so 
when she was reinterred in 1870, with appro- 
priate commemorative services. Sometimes in 
crossing the fields near where she rested you 
may yet pick bits of lavender and wonder 
whether they are estrays from her herb garden. 
Across the field and on the edge of the marsh you 
may see late in August a gorgeous hedge of rose 
mallows and wonder whether she found strange 
merits in mallows for the sick. The whistle of 
the engine, the noise of nineteenth century 
civilization, long since drove away her walking 
spirit. Probably Peace Bouteler saw her appa- 



A Lady of the Olden Time. 87 

rition for the last time in the moonlight in the 
garden on the evening of her wedding day. 
Call it, however, a ghostly presence or a per- 
vading influence, or what you like, her presence 
still does linger over this land of her adoption. 
It comes to us as the sweet melody of a half 
forgotten tune or as a nosegay of old memories 
'mid the rush of nineteenth century life. There 
is very little of the real about it, but that little 
is fragrant and filled with the heroic devotion 
to duty, strong fibre of character and the high 
courage of those women of the old time life who 
were among our pioneer settlers. As we stand 
beside her tomb in the old graveyard at Say- 
brook Point, we may gain a mental vision at 
least of stately beauty and of gentle culture, 
and feel our hearts thrill with a finer courage 
and a more exalted sense of life and its purpose, 
through the memory of this lady of the olden 
time. 






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